


I Just Want to Wish You Well

by Zahri



Category: Cyclone Series - Courtney Milan
Genre: A slice of life in a time of pandemic, Adam Fucking Reynolds' Language, Blake just redoes the Cyclone videoconferencing interface system, Gen, Tina gets to work on her medical machines, coronavirus warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:21:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23975164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zahri/pseuds/Zahri
Summary: 2020.Apocalypse blogs and Monte Carlo simulations of disease are back in. Video interface design is one of the biggest silent aspects of everyday life.And Tina's working on her tiny medical robots.(Five months of a year that is already a century long)
Relationships: Blake Reynolds/Tina Chen
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	I Just Want to Wish You Well

**Author's Note:**

> As a heads up: if 'how Tina and Blake cope with the start of 2020' is not something you want to read right now, please take care of yourself and stay away. Be kind. Stay home, stay safe, save lives.

_"This video interface sucks. You're this small. Do **not** buy the Vortex, people, not unless you want one of the more romantic moments in your life to be compressed to the size of a sugar cube."_

January

There are many moments when Tina has asked herself whether agreeing to trade lives with Blake was really worth all the nonsense that follows.

The moment in late January 2020 when Melinda Gates called her personal cell phone and asked what assistance the Gates Foundation could provide to bioLogica for her virus-killing nanobot research was not one of those occasions.

“You know we’re still at the general research stage? Nothing’s close to anything more than in-vitro trials,” Tina warns. Most of the in-vitro trials are still dicing up the surrounding cells. There’s a reason the only successful prototypes so far are focused on killing cancer cells. Viruses are so much smaller it’s practically ridiculous that they’re even trying.

“We understand,” says Melinda freaking Gates. “To be honest, the bulk of our additional round of funding allocation is going to vaccine research, particularly to the labs that previously worked on SARS. But Adam’s been so enthusiastic about your work, and the board wanted to make sure we weren’t missing any approach. The money is earmarked for basic research, not coming out of our vaccine funding.”

And so the Gates Foundation provides an additional stream of funding to her lab.

Without Blake, Tina knows she wouldn’t have received this call. Medical robots are still too pie-in-the-sky. BioLogica is barely distinguishable from half a dozen other companies working on similar biotech robotics projects. The Gates Foundation would have no particular familiarity to place an extra call to allocate funding. And without the financial stability of being married to a multibillionaire, Tina would still be working 16 hours a day as a medical resident, rather than the same hours trying to program tiny robots to unravel RNA. 

As the news coming out of China gets progressively worse, Tina swallows her instinctive frustration over the fact that it is her privilege as now being considered part of the billionaire club that got her this opportunity, and focuses on the work that the lab is doing. Because this virus isn’t slowing down; it’s spreading, and it could just be the big one.

* * *

February

Maria calls. 

“We’ve been working on modelling for this virus,” is Maria’s opening line, even before the hi-how-are-yous. She sounds exhausted. “It’s bad, Tina. The R0 factor is the killer, along with the long incubation period and the death rate. If we could just trust the numbers coming out of China we could pin it down better, but it’s still such early days.”

“So is it the apocalypse?” Tina asks, even knowing the joke isn’t funny. They’re both too deep into the data available from the WHO to be laughing at it. 

“That’s the thing, Tina. It could be.” Maria sounds frustrated. “Six years of weekly posts on my blog and of course the real life scenario ends up being a goddamn flu. I can’t believe that Real Life is undermining my assumptions on the death rate that would scare people into acting irrationally. Two percent. It sounds so small, yet the impact is so huge.”

“It’s a lot of people,” Tina says quietly.

“Yeah.” Maria sighs. “If I could have picked my apocalypse, I was hoping it would be dinosaurs.”

“You don’t mean that,” says Tina, trying to sound upbeat. “Just think what Anj would say if we really had a dinosaur apocalypse. We’d never hear the end of it.”

“Dinosaurs would be easier,” says Maria.

* * *

March

March is a blur of panic and ever changing restrictions. Cyclone switches to work-from-home only early in the month, before the WHO even officially announces the pandemic. Timelines on new product launches blow out as the full impact of how long the Chinese factory shutdowns have affected production chains becomes clear.

Cyclone stock holds reasonably steady in a falling market. Sales are apparently up, as people upgrade their technology, get extra devices for their home offices and kids schooling and sheer entertainment while under stay home orders.

Hong Mei’s somehow an essential worker while her hours are simultaneously cut. Jian has been laid off again. Tina overrides her parents’ objections and deposits enough money in their bank account to pay the bills and groceries. “I don’t want you risking yourselves,” she snaps during a phone call home. “I can afford to do this monthly, for however long this lasts, and Mabel might need to move home since her college has closed their campus.”

I love you, Tina doesn’t say, as she keeps the family afloat. Don’t risk the racists screaming at you or attacking you. Don’t hurt yourself worse, Dad. In a just world, she wouldn’t have to support her parents, but America’s never had much of a safety net. Tina sleeps better at night knowing her job and her husband mean she can at least provide a private one for her family.

Adam laughs during a call to Blake and Tina. “I’ve never been happier to not be CEO. Having to make the decisions on a company-wide scale right now? Fuck me dead. I’ll just hide out in my office at home and work on design.”

“Are you two doing okay with the restrictions?” Blake asks, absently tapping his thumb against the table in front of him. 

“It’s fine. One of the fucking useful things about being worth almost a hundred billion dollars is that I have plenty of space in my house to prevent me from going stir crazy. How about you, asshole?”

“They haven’t banned running outside yet, Dad. I’m going out every day to make sure I get some fresh air. Tina leaves the house less than I do, and she still needs to go in to the lab.”

“How are the nanobots doing, Tina? Any chance they can fucking halt this pandemic?”

Tina shakes her head. “Working at a 0.1 micron scale is still practically impossible. We’re getting somewhere on tearing up cells, and that is useful for the cancer research, but viruses may simply be just too tiny.”

* * *

April

Blake is working on video-conferencing software again. Cyclone’s proprietary interface that manages the 5-way smartwatch calling has decent encryption, and he’s been swearing that all of the common public options like Zoom, Blue Jeans, Skype and Google Hangouts are deficient in multiple ways that irritate the interface dork that he is.

“Have you considered that launching a new piece of software in the middle of a pandemic is possibly not the best way to get user take-up?” asks Tina, laying a hand on Blake’s shoulder. He’s been working 16 hour days from his home office in the past week on this project.

Tina can’t really throw too much shade, as she’s been doing the same from her own office. She only heads into the lab when there’s something she absolutely can’t handle remotely. Getting suited up for the lab is just too much effort when most of what she does at the moment is analyse the machine coding before setting up another in-vitro nanobot test run. It’s still tearing things apart; they really might be on to an effective cancer treatment, if they can keep the machines on target. As a virus treatment, however, it’s still a pipe dream.

“It’s really just a software fork. It’s pretty close to completion, honestly; at this point we’re just ensuring stability for calls with over 30 people. We could push it out now as an operating system update, really, but I want it to be finished before it goes.” Blake runs his fingers through his hair, making it stand on end.

“Come to bed, please,” Tina asks. “It’ll still be here tomorrow. You can’t concentrate if you don’t sleep.”

“I need to go for a run,” grumbles Blake, but starts logging out of systems for the night. “And every day we delay launching this means more people get wedded to whatever system they’re currently using.”

“You know perfectly well that all the Cyclone megafans are going to download the software the instant that you release it. And if we have to stay under restrictions for as long as the doctors are predicting, plenty of people will want to move to a more secure platform as soon as it’s available.”

“You’re right and I’m sorry,” Blake says as he stands up from his desk, setting his hands at the small of his back as he stretches out from the position he’s been in. He turns and kisses Tina on the cheek. “Let me take a shower and I’ll be there shortly.”

* * *

May

“I just feel like today is a good day to repost my op-ed on Twitter. ‘Hey kids. Don’t do drugs’ is excellent advice, after all, and getting a call from the cocksucking aardvarks at the SEC is one of my least favourite things.”

Blake is sitting at the kitchen island, methodically slicing an apple up into small slivers. Adam’s image is cast onto the kitchen tablet, where it sits on its own stand. Most of the time the waterproof tablet is used to display recipes while cooking, but in the last few months it’s become the centre of socialising while in the kitchen.

Tina puts her own plate of leftovers down beside Blake and sits down, bumping her shoulder against his. “Hi Adam,” she says, waving her free hand. “What’s the problem?”

“Elon Musk is the problem,” says Blake absently, as he sets down his knife, spreading the apple slices out with his fingers.

“He’s gone and said something stupid on Twitter again?”

“He’s gone and said something goddamn fucking stupid on Twitter again,” repeats Adam. “I cannot believe he’d deliberately manipulate his stock price in public like that. Does he _want_ the Commissioner of the SEC on his back?”

Tina takes a bite of her pad thai and nudges Blake with an elbow. He glances at her sheepishly, then picks up a piece of apple and takes a bite. “So you think subtweeting him is a good idea,” she says leadingly. 

Adam raises an eyebrow. “It might make him fucking think for a change.”

“You know it won’t, Dad,” says Blake calmly. “He thinks anything said on Twitter is a game.”

“I still want to say it.”

“I still want a vaccine and a pony,” says Tina. “Be the bigger man. Gloat in private.”

“Avoid getting your own call from the SEC,” says Blake. All three of them wince; they have already had to answer some questions regarding Tina’s research since the start of the year. As Adam has previously donated to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Tina getting a grant in January led to a number of sticky questions.

“Fine,” says Adam. He switches topics. “How’s the new program going, Blake?”

“Really well!” says Blake enthusiastically. “We’ll be ready to launch in less than two weeks. It’s really just a matter of branding at this point…”

Tina takes another bite of her pad thai and hums to herself quietly. Somehow, they’ll get through this. Technology has always brought this family together.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is brought to you by Elon Musk's decision to be an idiot on Twitter on 1 May 2020. Adam Reynolds wants to tell you: Don't do drugs, kids. Don't go yell on Twitter and manipulate your stock price if you don't want the SEC on your back.
> 
> (If you do want to yell at me about the Cyclone Series, please comment below)


End file.
